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There once was a magazine called The Word, although I always called it Word, as that it what it was originally called. Had I never written a single word for Word, I would have been its most ardent admirer (and subscriber), and would have lamented its passing with the same moistened eyes. As it happens, I did write for it, but I looked forward to the new issue arriving every month for 114 consecutive months between February 2003 and August 2012 not just to see how my words looked on the hallowed page, but to read all the other words by all the other smart and witty people on all the other pages.

Records show that I began writing a regular page column for Word at the very end of 2004, initially about TV and called Telly Addict. (Not a bad name.) In November 2006, that column’s brief was expanded to include … everything. It was renamed Whatever to reflect this. Whatever ran until the end of 2010, when it stopped. I was sad about this, but pulled myself together and carried on writing reviews and features for my favourite magazine until its final issue, including the third before last cover story, about the Stone Roses. (My only other cover story was Elbow, both pictured.)

As the magazine did not reprint its articles or reviews on the website (which instead predominantly acted as a water cooler for the Word massive), I find I am sitting on an awful lot of my own published writing that I remain very proud of. With the passing of the years, some of it even takes on a socio-historical sheen. So, without rhyme or reason – and mainly because I chanced up a random column from 2010 about the disruption to life as we know it caused by an Icelandic volcano while clearing out my email’s “sent” folder this morning – I thought it might be fun, if not necessarily an actual public service, to reproduce some of these columns here.

I hope you enjoy them, and that they bring back some fond memories of an era when you could publish magazines and a loyal knot of the discerning would buy them.

Ah, music. A whole calendar year without once stepping in front of the mic at 6 Music has seriously affected the equilibrium of my musical clearing house. Though I seem to have been jettisoned by the network, my DJ’s pigeonhole was not sealed up, so some new music still got through, thanks to an assortment of kindly pluggers and expectant artists and managers, all of whom were sending me records in good faith that I might play them on the radio. This was not to be. (My only success in this regard was composing a piece celebrating 80s indie for Front Row on Radio 4, which allowed me to play short bursts of classics like Candy Skin by the Fire Engines and Don’t Come Back by the Marine Girls on national radio, not to mention plug Cherry Red’s historic Scared To Get Happy compilation.) Still, it means I have heard some new music in 2013, although not much. As I have discovered to music’s cost, there’s nothing like having a radio show to focus, organise and refresh your musical tastes. (I still miss the good influence of Josie Long and it’s been two years now!)

My exile from 6 Music has nonetheless pushed me back into the real world, where albums must be purchased. This really concentrates the mind. It makes your purchases more conservative. You buy records by artists you already like – Arcade Fire, My Bloody Valentine, a resurgent David Bowie – although I’d lately lost my faith in Arctic Monkeys and hadn’t even sought out their new album AM for old times’ sake, but then I saw them storm it on Later and I put my money on the counter. So that’s how it works. I won’t order my Top 10 albums, as in earning a place here, they are all winners. I am on friendly terms with three of these artists. Luckily, they have all made records I like this year.

I accept that the modern music scene is based on tracks, but I shall continue to call them songs, as I pretty much hate the modern world. A few songs have filtered through and found purchase and these are them.

It’s a fair cop. I haven’t read many books this year. The blame for this we can lay squarely at the door of the New Yorker, which continues to hog my reading time. In fact, how I managed to read anything else this year remains a mystery. Word magazine commissioned me to review a couple of novels – prequels to Trainspotting and The Godfather, by Irvine Welsh and Ed Falco, respectively, neither of which was up to much – and I fear that without Kate Mossman slinging a paperback my way, 2013 may see even less in my book pile. (I did promise not to buy any new books in 2012 until I’d finished reading all of my unread books, and I broke that resolution three times.)

The 9/11 Wars Jason Burke (Allen Lane) This came out in hardback in 2010, but I used a voucher to buy it in early 2011, and I confess I’m still reading it, but after Burke’s definitive Al-Qaeda, I knew I’d love it, and I do.Pity The Billionaire Thomas Franks (Harvill Secker)Driving Jarvis Ham Jim Bob (The Friday Project)The History of the NME Pat Long (Portico)How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 Richard King (Faber)Keynes: Return of The Master Robert Skidelsky (Penguin) This came out in 2010, and I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s a great primer for the economist whose name has been most quoted since the crash, sometimes in vain, sometimes not.The Road to Serfdom Friedrich Hayek (Routledge) And this came out in 1944, but I was moved to pick up a lovely old secondhand copy in order to try to understand right-wing thinkers. (Hayek is named as often as Friedman and Rand by free marketeers.) It’s hard going, and again, I can’t say I’ve finished it yet, but I’m afraid right-wing thinkers are still alien to me.The Great Unwashed Gary and Warren Pleece (Escape Books)

That’s nine books. Must try harder. Well, I would try harder, but that would involve cancelling my subscription to the New Yorker. It’s not as if I’ve been playing computer games instead of reading. And I must mention the redesigned BFI Film Classics, which came out in August, and the BFI very kindly sent me. They now look as good as they read.

Well, I’ve certainly put the hours in this year in terms of TV. My first full calendar year of writing and recording Telly Addict every week: that’s a lot of percentage in the Sky+ tank. Because I am now duty-bound to review all the exciting new stuff – and that means stuff I wouldn’t normally watch, like Red Or Black, TOWIE and The Apprentice – I find myself watching and analysing the first episode of everything, but not always bothering to watch the second episode. There are only so many hours in the day etc.

This, if you run a finger down my final list, accounts for the fact that Secret State, which I wasn’t sure about to start with, makes the list, and The Town, which I was sure about, doesn’t. I saw the former through to the bitter end, which means something, and I found myself unable to summon up the enthusiasm to see how The Town turned out, which also means something. My enthusiasm for The Great British Bake Off was entirely sincere: I couldn’t wait for the next episode. This is how I feel about the re-runs of Friday Night Lights: can’t wait. (Although the Guardian erroneously claimed that I judged TheBake Off to be “the best TV show of 2012”, when, in fact, it was simply my favourite.)

It seems obsessive and random to put these fantastic shows in any kind of qualitative order, so I’ll leave them in the order that they occurred to me. I’m not sure whether or not I ought to apologise for the proliferation of shows on Sky Atlantic. The channel has a deal with HBO; ergo, it’s where all the best imports turn up. Sorry (There, I apologised.) Oh, and by the way, I enjoyed some of the Olympics on the BBC, and Euro 2012, on the BBC and ITV, but found Gary Lineker a bit irksome on both.

Feel free to nominate shows you loved. I fell out with Downton during Series 2, but was surprised to find myself back onboard with Series 3. I also thought that Gates, on Sky Living, came out very well, but since I was one of its writers, I am unable to trust my own judgement. We must try Sky Living’s judgement, though, and it won’t be returning for a second series.

I think I’m ready to commit now. Here are my Top 20 films of 2012. From where I’m sitting – which is usually in a cinema, with a paid-for ticket in my hand, watching something subtitled, but not exclusively – it’s been a very good year: stimulating, surprising, modest and varied. (I’ve discounted reissues from the Top 20, although there are very few films I loved as much as Ordet and Le Quai des brumes.)

Now, I’m just doing the following for the record. It’s every new film I have seen this year, pretty much in order of theatrical release (although some I will have caught up with on DVD), and this includes reissues. I think it adds up to 121 films. I feel annoyed that I somehow missed Argo, and This Is Not A Film, and Ill Manors, but there are only so many hours in a day, and days in a week. I’ve been a real trainspotter about country of origin, but usually, the first country is the “nationality” of the film.

A busy filmgoing year. Perhaps this is why I’ve spent so little of listening to new music – a fact that will be apparent when I do my Top 10 Albums of 2012 – and reading new books – ergo: my forthcoming Top 3 Books of 2012!

Looking forward to your own choices. Ideally, you won’t begin your comments with “I can’t believe you missed out …”

Ah, that’s better. I’ve finally seen the two key films I needed to see before the end of 2012. They are Michael Haneke’s Amour, and Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, and both predictably crash into my Top 10 films of the year, which I will publish next week. In the meantime, might I suggest some similarities between what are two alarmingly different films? I love it when circumstance and the vagaries of the release schedules do this, and wish I had the time to do this in more detail. First, the differences:

Amour is an Austrian/French/German co-production, in French, set in France, and written and directed by Haneke. The fictional story of an elderly couple coping with the physical deterioration of one of them, it is apparently based upon a number of Haneke’s own experiences, and stars two veterans of French cinema, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. It is an austere chamber piece, shot largely in a Parisian apartment, which was built on a set.

Sightseers is a British production, in English, set in England, and co-written by its two stars, comedians Steve Oram and Alice Lowe, with Amy Jump (who also co-wrote Wheatley’s previous film, Kill List). The fictional story of a young couple exploring what is a relatively new relationship while caravanning across England, the characters were created and developed by Oram and Lowe in a stand-up act. It is a bleak comedy, shot on location.

What these two disparate films have obviously in common is that neither is comfortable viewing. Amour is slow, precise, claustrophobic and on the surface, tragic, as Riva’s character, a piano teacher, is reduced to a shell by a series of strokes. Her decline is difficult to watch at close quarters. Sightseers has a comedic, self-deprecating tone, and sometimes strays into farce, but it’s driven by a string of murders committed by the couple that take it into much darker waters. Nobody in the admittedly half-empty cinema I saw it in laughed once. Although perhaps they were smiling, as I was.

What they have in common, aside from the fact that I loved them both, is that they are about love, and the things love will make us do. In the case of Georges and Anne in Amour, who have been together for decades, their love forces them to face death, and to ask how far one would go for the other if the other was in a reduced state. Although the situation is sad, and depressing, the impact it has upon the couple’s devoted love is uplifting and, oddly, heartwarming. In both films, we hear an elderly woman moaning in pain. It opens Sightseers: it’s the infirm mother of Tina (Lowe), who is wailing in mourning of her dog, which was killed in an accident. Her pain is emotional. In Amour, we hear Anne moaning; the effect is just as unsettling and hypnotic. But her pain is physical and emotional. Tina and Chris (Oram) have only been “going out” for three months. Their love is new, and fresh, and thrilling. But it, too, is tested by how far one is prepared to go for the other.

I won’t go into plot details, obviously, but Sightseers builds through a series of grisly events to a point where Tina and Chris’s love has been strengthened, or so it appears. Amour begins with the ending and works in flashback, so we know the outcome of Georges and Anne’s ordeal, but it still shocks when it happens. You come out of both films with your faith in the power of love confirmed. (Sightseers actually goes literal and uses Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s The Power Of Love on its soundtrack, one of a number of pop tunes that either underlines or ironically undermines the action. Amour has no score, but classical music is key to the couple’s bond, just as, we might assume, 80s hits might be to the couple in Sightseers – Oram and Lowe were both teenagers in that decade.)

It goes without saying that Oram and Lowe, who conceived the project and their characters, bring a full-blooded sense of reality to two protagonists who might, in other circumstances, feel like Tarantino cartoons. No matter that Tina, for instance, has knitted herself some sexy underwear for the trip – including crotchless knickers – and Steve demands, “Mint me”, with his mouth agape when he requires an extra-strong mint of Tina; these comic creations live and breathe. Equally, although Trintignant and Riva are playing protagonists written from scratch by Haneke, their octogenarian skill and experience create an utterly believable autumn-years chemistry.

Although the apartment in Amour has been artificially created on a soundstage, it was modelled on an existing one, and it has been dressed impeccably, such that you could imagine Georges having sat in that same armchair for years and years. (The film actually opens in a theatre, where he and Anne enjoy what will turn out to be their last ever piano recital together, thereafter prisoners in their own home.) Sightseers makes a virtue of its locations, following Chris’s carefully-planned route from Redditch to Yorkshire, via such well-worn “quirky visitor attractions” as the Keswick Pencil Museum (it’s been used as a gag by many an observer of English life, but now, we actually see it!). It is as much an awestruck monument to England’s dark and mysterious past as The Wicker Man is of Celtic paganism. (Kill List, if you’ve seen it, draws more explicitly on pagan worship – as did Hot Fuzz, whose writer/director Edgar Wright is one of the key producers on Sightseers; both are made by Big Talk films.)

Terminal illness is not a new subject for drama. But Amour takes it to a new level, through the attitude of Georges, who rejects the hand-wringing of their mostly absent daughter (Isabelle Huppert), and refuses pity or sympathy, accepting the round-the-clock care his beloved wife needs with stoic patience. Seeing him sing to Anne, as part of her therapy, while she struggles to use her half-frozen mouth to join in, is one of the most moving things I’ve seen at the cinema this year. Sightseers doesn’t quite hit this pitch at any point, but Tina’s loyalty to Chris is no less touching. It may be played for laughs, but there’s a scene involving someone else’s digital camera that’s almost heartbreaking, thanks to Lowe’s brilliant reaction.

I’ve become a devoted admirer of Haneke’s work – Code Unknown, The Piano Teacher, Funny Games, Caché, The White Ribbon – but suspect that Amour might be his finest hour. I’m also a massive fan of Ben Wheatley’s films so far – Down Terrace, Kill List – and, even though he didn’t write this one, which skews the auteurist pitch a bit, it’s an incredible directorial achievement. The landscapes, in particular, seem to seethe with rage at certain points, while at others, they provide the primal peace and tranquility that Chris cannot get in the town. Down Terrace, made for almost no money, was physically closer to Amour, in that it was confined to rooms. Sightseers takes Wheatley out of himself, and offers a glimpse of a wider world. Meanwhile, Haneke has retreated indoors, back, perhaps, to the confinement of Funny Games. But that film’s trickiness has gone.

So, anyway, two amazing films. Go and see them both. If you’re lucky, four loud women won’t walk in during the final seconds of Sightseers, as they did last night. They thought they were walking in to see Great Expectations and – I heard them say – they assumed what we were watching was an advert.

First: it looks like I’m getting two weeks off! So, this week’s Telly Addict, although not a review of the year, acts as an end-of-the-year, end-of-the-world edition. Under review are BBC Sports Personality of the Year, BBC1; the finale of Season Three of Boardwalk Empire, Sky Atlantic (no spoilers); The British Comedy Awards, C4; Richard E Grant’s Hotel Secrets, Sky Atlantic; Inside Claridge’s, BBC2; and Little Crackers, Sky1.

Secondly, I was also asked to promote The Great British Bake Off as my favourite TV show of 2012 (incorrectly billed as “the best TV programme of 2012″ in their more provocative headline). You can watch my little three-minute film here. Props to the Guardian website people for, once again, flagging this up on the main page. It’s reassuring to see that the commenters below the line have been instantaneous with their comfort and joy.

I watched this once. The presenters heads are completely up their own arses and it’s about the most tedious, poncy, self opinionated, piece of shit I have ever had the misfortune to view. Baking should be fun, with these arseholes it becomes a ritualised chore. More utter bilge from the increasingly bilge-producing BBC.

The middle-class fetishisation of food at a time of austerity – just what a PSB provider should be doing! What next … four celebrities in a big house with all the heating and electricity on talking about how warm and cosy they are?

FFS. We used to have telly like Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation, Malcom Muggeridge, Face to Face, Not Only …But Also... Now we have endless cookery crap and people taking DNA tests live on air. Seriously- God help this country. It ain’t the Royals fault, either.

Corn syrup for undernourished brains.

Utter trash. Pointless competitions make for cheap nasty television. The smug presenters and contestants are horrible.

No names, obviously, as that would be playing into their evil hands. (I like the concept of “self opinionated” though.) So it’s “Goodwill to all men!” to those miserable fuckers, and “Merry Christmas!” to the rest of you. Thanks for viewing this year – in increasing numbers, so I’m told, since we moved to Tuesday mornings. Here’s to another year of me sitting at a slight angle and trying not to wear the same shirt two weeks’ running.